13 ms·

Why do so few humans kill themselves?

238 points by networked 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago
The relationship between depression and suicide with age is just correlation not causation, so it's silly to draw a line there and assume they are connected -- especially since we know depressed people have a higher suicide rate than people without depression. I think this post is an attempt to make an obvious question seem like it has deep or non-obvious answers; but in reality I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. It's that simple. It's like asking "Why don't more humans become ballet dancers?" Some try and fail but most just don't want to. If the question is really; why don't more people want to kill themselves, then the answer is going to vary person by person and be difficult if not impossible to answer globally. Bob might not have any thoughts of suicide at all but Alice might think about it but want to see her nephew grow up and not inflict that pain on her parents. Truly answering that question would involve a really comprehensive study of a lot of different groups to even attempt to answer it.
- pritambaral 10y ago
  The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. The paper asks a question, and the article tries to think along the lines of the question and asks some more. ---- > I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. That is a simple conclusion, indeed; and it's not wrong either. The article tries to reason how that conclusion came to be. People who have had suicidal thoughts but didn't go through with it did ultimately not want to do it, but before that decision they did want to, by definition of 'suicidal people'. The article – inspired by the paper – opens with the premise that 'pain' and 'human cognition' alone should make a human want to 'give up' upon the slightest inconvenience, and then goes on to try and come up with other factors — like your Alice wanting to see her nephew grow up or not wanting to inflict pain on her parents — that prevent 'pain and brain' from having their way uncontested.
  - Jedd 10y ago
    > The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. It does draw a conclusion: > Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk > of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, > especially young people. But the effect is tiny. > And some people do think antidepressants relieve > suffering. If depression caused suicide, treating > depression should reduce suicide rates, but of > course it hasn’t. This could be due to the > ineffectiveness of treatment, however. If depression caused suicide, treating depressing should reduce suicide rates ... BUT ... that assumes we identify and 'rectify' all depression, and that the only cause of suicide is depression, and that the only metric of success for treatment of depression is a reduction in suicide (across the board) ... and if you adopt those three positions then the numbers start to make sense. 'But of course' this isn't the whole story.
    - patall 10y ago
      Exactly. Treating the symptoms does not mean treating the cause and might even enhance it.
    - pritambaral 10y ago
      That is not causation, is it?
- mabcat 10y ago
  I think your comment has blurred some distinctions that the post takes care to pull apart. Every human inevitably suffers and has reason to commit suicide, so why don't they all want to? Many more people want to commit suicide than do commit suicide, so why is that? The reasons that you posited for Alice not killing herself were among many mentioned in the post.
- bitshiffed 10y ago
  I think the post is very interesting, and not completely obvious. It's not as much about people deciding whether or not to commit suicide; it is, that all of the benefits of intelligence also come with one potentially huge evolutionary problem, suicide. Given that any natural variance in likelihood to commit suicide should be very heavily selected for or against, what adaptations might we have that were picked up to decrease it's likelihood? The idea in the post is that some mental illnesses may be connected to these adaptations.
scardine 10y ago
The relevant question is "Why so many humans kill themselves?". Because asking the other way around implies suicide is natural, which is a ratter extraordinary claim.
- jelly 10y ago
  The article approaches it from the perspective of "what preventative measures does the human body and mind use against suicide." In this context "so few" is probably the right wording, given a 98.6% reduction compared to no prevention (according to the numbers from the article).
- eximius 10y ago
  Perhaps. But it is also pedagogically valuable to ask "Why don't more people commit suicide?" We might learn something about the mental defence mechanism the brain employs.
  - uuiiyyokthis 10y ago
    Pedagogy /can/ go off the rails if it places other goals above the elimination of human killing. I know this is self-evident, however there are many hidden killers out there so consider this a billboard.
    - sevenless 10y ago
      There's no ethical reason to oppose suicide, in general. Many cultures valorized it in certain situations.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  The question as posed is an interesting one, as it sits on the boundary of where the "lizard brain" and executive thought process meet. The instinct to survive is very strong, even when the rational brain thinks (rightly or wrongly) that it's a hopeless situation. Understanding how and why people cross that line may be a way to identify people at risk and intervene.
- deleted 10y ago
wahsd 10y ago
How is this such a difficult question. Suicide is an inherently evolutionary bad idea and is eliminated from the gene pool by obvious means. Are there even any documented incidents of aberrational suicide in any other species?
antiquark 10y ago
Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.
- jokoon 10y ago
  Well in society artificial selection seems to have much more influence on us.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    Society is natural.
    - jokoon 10y ago
      Government, laws, science, technology, management? Do all those things appear in nature without our initiative? They seem to be made by humans. I don't really know. Ultimately you can argue that everything happening in the universe is natural, but I would make a difference between things created by intelligent creatures and the things that appears with natural selection. That doesn't involve intelligent design.
      - allendoerfer 10y ago
        Many other species have different forms of complex societies.
libeclipse 10y ago
According to the link, around 1 in 100 people commit suicide. It could be argued that this is a rather high number. Certainly any other diseases that achieved this would receive significant attention. What is interesting however, is how suicide rates haven't changed with other things like medical improvements and improvements to quality of life.
- paulcole 10y ago
  I think you're vastly overestimating how much people care. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Check out, Chronic lower respiratory diseases at nearly 4x suicide. Can't remember hearing a thing about that in the news.
  - 2607_hn 10y ago
    You probably have heard of campaigns to reduce smoking. These diseases (e.g., COPD and the related emphysema/chronic bronchitis) are strongly linked to smoking. In the mid 90s, I remember seeing some anti-smoking campaigns that used people with tracheotomies (see ref 1); these folks almost definitely had lower respiratory disease. Your point is well-taken - we hardly spoke about addiction as a medical health problem until recently. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY - this is only part of one of the ads I recall
  - sevenless 10y ago
    It's also a killer of younger people. I'd bet suicide accounts for more life-years lost.
- tim333 10y ago
  >significant attention I think people are aware of it but it's a bit depressing to talk about given that solutions aren't easy. I can see it getting more coverage as other causes become less common in young people. It's the #1 cause for ages 15-45 in Australia for example (that's just the country that came up on random googling) http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/ http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/ I think it's more cheerful to give attention to making society happier and healthier which should have a knock on effect on the suicide rate.
benten10 10y ago
There's this AMAZING scifi story, which I read in 'Writers of The Future' (great series, named after the eminent L Ron. H.). It imagines a future where after a certain age, everyone has a chip planted in them, which makes it possible to kill oneself 'on demand', painlessly, so to speak. It 'naturally selects' away all those who are uhh, more instably minded, and selects for the very very 'stable' minded. I believe the story was about how boring, unimaginative the society had gotten because natural selection had optimized for stability. Great read! You should read it if you haven't. The writer's of the future series is a collection of amazing stories also, and what finally tipped me into the Sciences, despite the somewhat uhh interesting Scientology connection. Anyone remember the name of the story? This was inspired by @antiquark's comment: >>Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.
tribune 10y ago
Remember that it's technically a valid evolutionary strategy to live to, say, 25, have a few kids, then off yourself. Suicide before reproduction is all that would be selected against.
- hasenj 10y ago
  Depends on how much your children need you actually. I've read somewhere that part of the reason women lose ability to bear children past around 40 is so they can take care of their grand children because that is usually more important at that point from an evolutionary point of view. It might have been a mere speculation but it kind of makes sense. Rather than take the time to bare and raise one child, that time is better spent taking care of your 6 grand children.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    I dislike these kinds of explanations because they seem like ex post facto rationalizations. An explanation that could have gone both ways explains nothing: * Women stop having children after 40 because it's more important to raise the children you already have. * Women don't stop having children after 40 because bearing more offspring increases your chances of survival. Your explanation barely makes sense even on its own merits. Surely, if nature wanted us to have N children and then take care of them, it would have set a cutoff on N, rather than on the time. What if someone has no children before 40? Is it to their evolutionary advantage to care for the children they didn't have? Or, if your explanation were true, why would women not spend ten years gestating and given birth to a healthy 10-year old? It's illogical to design a system that can pop out one baby every nine months and then say "okay now that you've had anywhere from zero to thirty children, it would be best if you stopped and took care of them.
    - pizza 10y ago
      We should design an ultralongitudinal study where we select for child-rearing volume and see what result we get /s
    - sinxoveretothex 10y ago
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>The fact that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in medical technology and other ways of life is astounding. Because depression is a disease, its not just feeling blue because something happened to you and as such it probably has has the same distribution since the early days of humanity. Its a disease with no good treatments so we can expect the same mortality rate. I think handwringing over people having easier lives but still killing themselves is fairly meaningless, and frankly, more than a little shaming. Depression affects people almost randomly. Wealthy people with easy lives kill themselves just as readily as poor people with harder lives. You can't will yourself out of depression because things are easy for you. The disease, unfortunately, doesn't work that way. I have major depression. Its not caused by some negative life events or my parents not loving me or anything like that. Its clearly something I was born with or rapidly developed when I was just a child. I think its dangerous to talk about depression as not being a disease of the brain and as something that emerges from negative life events. Those things can certainly make it worse, but depression is a disease like any other, not a mood.
mikeash 10y ago
While interesting, this article seems to ignore the possibility that most people simply have a very strong desire to live. It assumes that if someone is suffering, and death would end that suffering, then suicide makes sense, and something weird must be going on to make people keep going. But this really doesn't make sense. The entire concept of suffering exists merely to keep us alive. We experience pain and despair and sadness not because it's some inherent part of being conscious, but because those sensations help us to avoid things which are detrimental to survival. When push comes to shove, the drive to survive is what's fundamental, and that will (usually) override the desire to avoid suffering. As intelligent, conscious beings, we have the capability to understand when survival is no longer possible, making suffering a waste. Thus we can, sometimes, override our desire to live in the face of terminal illness. But what's weird is not the fact that we don't constantly kill ourselves at the first sign of trouble, what's weird is the fact that we do sometimes kill ourselves when things look completely hopeless. You might as well try to stay alive, after all.
- 55555 10y ago
  > But what's weird is not the fact that we don't constantly kill ourselves at the first sign of trouble, what's weird is the fact that we do sometimes kill ourselves when things look completely hopeless. I think hope plays a big part. We don't kill ourselves because we have hope. If we are suffering and have no hope, that's a recipe for suicide.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Being extremely depressed actually reduces short term risks of suicide because planning shuts down. It's the middle ground where things are bad, but people can still think that has the highest risks.* *Excluding hospital assisted suicide where someone OD's on pain medication under end of life pain.
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      But "no hope" is not equivalent to "extremely depressed". Think of people who commit suicide over inescapable scandals, chronic pain, or terminal illness. Extremely depressed comes with 'no hope', but that's cancelled out by 'decreased agency' (which is one theory for why antidepressants carry suicide risk). Not every form of hopelessness shares that loss of agency.
jokoon 10y ago
Easy answer: because we want to believe life is precious and that you only live once. Mental health is taboo. I'm not trying to say that we should let people die, but the living standard has really skyrocketed, meanwhile we still have behaviors and systems that do damage to mental health, and we still disregard those problems.
- hasenj 10y ago
  I think actually it's because we fear death. Even if you're an atheist and know that when you die nothing will happen besides you disappearing, you still don't want to do it. Even people who commit suicide often would rather if they didn't have to use that option. The worst thing about war in my opinion is not just that people die, but that people live in constant fear of death.
  - pluma 10y ago
    > Even if you're an atheist I really don't understand this sentiment. Surely belief in an afterlife is a far greater motivator to off yourself than not? It's only religions that threaten you with eternal suffering if you do that would act as a special deterrent (easily eliminating all religions that don't have a concept of hell). Especially if you consider that some of those even go out of their way to make exceptions for certain forms of murder-suicide ("suicide attacks").
  - ionised 10y ago
    You're presuming to speak for others. I don't fear death at all. I fear dying slowly and in pain.
_jgvg 10y ago
Maybe we should just add lithium to the water supply, although that would drive conspiracy theorists crazy! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579 "Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L; the differences remain statistically significant (p less than 0.01) after corrections for population density." Edit: on a second thought, it wouldn't drive them crazy, it would literally calm them! Edit 2: I'm not proposing adding therapy-level doses of lithium to the water, just equalizing it to the water in other regions.
- nibs 10y ago
  I made that argument in a prior thread and people were really, really against it. Despite the abundance of evidence, from that study and the Japanese one [1]. I think Zinc would make a good addition too re: suicide [2]. There are two other large scale studies like this for lithium, both confirming the findings. One from Greece [3] and one from Argentina (can't find it...) [1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280 [2]: http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00626-5/abstract?cc=y= http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00626-5/abs... [3]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668
  - iaskwhy 10y ago
    Are these available as supplements and, if so, is it safe to take them?
    - johnward 10y ago
      It's available as a prescription in the US. A psychiatrist can prescribe it. There are other drugs that have less side effects that can be tried first though. I wouldn't take it without doctor supervision as it's very easy to reach toxic levels in your blood. Even while on it with a doctor you need blood work regularly. It is one thing that did finally start to help me after about 10 years of dealing with bipolar 2 (which included symptoms of not wanting to live). https://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Meds/Lithium https://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Meds/Lithium
tmcpro 10y ago
the highest suicide rate is among people 85 years or older. With the advancement of healthcare people are living longer. So the rate of suicide amongst younger demographics most likely has declined slightly
- hasenj 10y ago
  Interesting. I've often contemplated about it. I don't think I want to live past 80. I mean unless there would be a medical revolution where you can retain youth or slow down aging significantly.
  - a3n 10y ago
    Get back to us when you turn 80. :) People's experience change their perspective. What's important to you now will change. What you're able to appreciate changes.
    - hasenj 10y ago
      I actually used to have that limit set to 60, but then when I thought about it, I probably would still have some physical strength at 60 and still wouldn't want to die. But at 80 I can't imagine myself being other than a total wreck.
      - pshc 10y ago
        60 is the new 40 :)
      - vkou 10y ago
        My grandfather is 89. He can't walk very far, he gets tired very easily, and he has arrhythmia - yet he is still very strong, and very active. Most days, he gets up at 5, works in the garden, or the woodworking shop, or on property maintenance, finishes up by noon, and watches television until evening. This has been more or less his routine for the past 13 years. If you remain active through your life, I think you're much more likely to stay active as you're older. I intend to retire by 40, but I don't intend to be idle.
return0 10y ago
> virtually all adults have the intellectual wherewithal to take their own lives Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead", and another to actually go through the processes to do that. Suicide killers for example, need a strong metaphysical motive and promise of reward to do that. I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal pressures would ever consider suicide.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  > Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead", and another to actually go through the processes to do that I think everyone has the capability, just as they have to murder. That they have not found circumstance such that they can conceive of it taking place doesn't mean they can't. People discover surprising (for good and ill) things about themselves when pushed to their limits and beyond. > I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal pressures would ever consider suicide. Whilst they'd be free of debt collectors, divorce, job loss, shame and the various other factors that may increase suicide, they'd also have new factors. For instance perhaps the island has no, or inadequate food and water. If you had a revolver and the prospect of starving to death considering surely suicide may be considered? What of disease or serious injury?
- hansjorg 10y ago
  > Suicide killers for example, need a strong metaphysical motive and promise of reward to do that. There are many examples of suicide bombings without religious motivation and with non-religious perpetrators.
Locke 10y ago
> One of the most amazing things about suicide is that over the past 80 years or so in the United States, suicide rates have been extremely flat. The fact that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in medical technology and other ways of life is astounding. This may be true in the US, but in Greenland it seems like suicide rates have changed in response to changing ways of life: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/47484792...
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  An obvious question is whether suicide rates are unchanged, or simply flat because we have opposed changes obscuring the data. There's a bit of variance in the US numbers, and I wonder how means reduction, a decline in chronic pain/terminal illness, and various way of life changes compare. I'd be surprised if none of those things were relevant, but less surprised if they didn't add up to a clear trend.
tim333 10y ago
tl;dr, the article mostly discusses Soper’s hypothesis that "mental illnesses" such as depression evolved as defences against suicide rather than being the cause. So I guess rather than thinking the job's crap, I'll just have a jolly skydiving trip with no chute you get depressed instead. There might be something there - I've always been a bit puzzled by the evolutionary function of depression.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I'm not sure there needs to be an evolutionary function for everything. Some things are just "dewclaws".
rrod 10y ago
I had a strange mental illness period a few years ago. In my opinion, Dr Peter Breggin and others with similar believes are right. To some people, like slow metabolizers, these psychiatric drugs, are the cause of suicide and other irrational behavior. The author says "Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, especially young people. But the effect is tiny". I think the word "tiny" is the problem here. The effect is not "tiny". It is simply misunderstood or ignored.
sixhobbits 10y ago
Martin Hart: So... what's the point of getting' outta bed in the morning? Rustin Cohle: I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide. --True Detective
- Shengbo 10y ago
  Time is a flat circle. rolls up a booger between his thumb and index finger
Joof 10y ago
I got really scared for a while because I was both suicidal (the idea itself gave me an endorphin rush to think about) and my energy levels were fairly normal / I wasn't showing other symptoms of being depressed. Depression as a mechanism for preventing suicide sounds plausible.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jdimov9 10y ago
You don't seem to understand much about evolution, or life. Claiming that evolution is a random, unguided "whatever works" process is mere ignorance. To everyone who has ever looked around (or listened around, or sensed around) even for one moment, it is beyond obvious that not only evolution works "by design", but that this design is supremely personal and the ultimate in creativity. So the implied negative connotations in your "creationist" label are misplaced.
- sinxoveretothex 10y ago
  Ok, so there's a "designer" out there engineering rapists, murderers, limbless people, mentally handicapped people? Why the hell did the designer create maggots that feed on people's nose tissues[1]? More to the point: what's the design goal? To quote EY [2]: > But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind? > When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines. I don't deny that if there is a "designer", then he gets a lot of points for creativity. I mean, it takes a lot of "creativity" to design an 8 limbed baby [3], twins sharing the same body [4] or a child with a skull that won't stop growing [5]. Sure, it's very "creative" and even personal I guess (I mean, when you get ostracized for having an "elephant face" it sure appears to be very meant and taken very personally). So I guess you're right in at least one metaphorical sense. [1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1249503802 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1249503802 [2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM82Hs0LEpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM82Hs0LEpc [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2SWfoPD5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2SWfoPD5c
- enraged_camel 10y ago
amelius 10y ago
Reminds me of this quote: > If there wasn't the possibility of killing myself, I would have killed myself!
kingkawn 10y ago
When its over its over forever. No point rushing.
razorunreal 10y ago
What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world and their place in it. When someone's expectations do not match reality it's not normally considered intelligent, but positivity seems unrealistic, common and beneficial to survival.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  >What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world and their place in it It's funny that you should mention that... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
DNA is a self-optimizing program for its own survival. After millions of years of optimization, ones will to live is quite powerful. The twist is that the optimization mechanism relies on mistakes in copying itself. One outcome of a copy mistake could be a weakened will to live in certain negative life circumstances.
cwmma 10y ago
I guess it might make sense to compare to suicide rates in non-human animals (e.g. dolphins which can just stop breathing to kill themselves)
onetwotree 10y ago
A mistake and an insight. The idea that white men have the highest suicide rate is misleading - they have the highest rate of success, which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns, which are far and away the most effective and effortless way to commit suicide. Effortlessness is important, because depression makes planning so difficult. FWIW I'd really appreciate it if we could not turn this into a debate about gun control. The insight, of course, is that Elliot Smith didn't have a drug problem, he was looking for a drug solution. This is an incredibly accurate description of addiction. The saying in AA is "If alcohol didn't do anything for me, I'd never have let it do anything to me". Drugs and alcohol are a solution to the underlying problem, one in which we simply can't feel ok the way others can. Of course, they are a solution with horrible side effects, and one that eventually stops working. Many members of AA describe getting sober because the drugs and alcohol weren't working anymore, only to become suicidal and realize that the drugs and alcohol were only symptoms of a much deeper problem.
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  > which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns America is not the world
  - onetwotree 10y ago
    I think the data were taken among Americans (they included Native Americans). You're right though, and looking at data from other countries with stronger gun restrictions would be an interesting way to check this hypothesis.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      In England you can use the Office for National Statistics data sets. These are good quality, and they're very clear about what is or isn't counted as a death by suicide. http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2014registrations http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea... You can also use the Public Health England "Fingertips" datasets which breaksdown the data a bit more. Here's the main Fingertips site: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ And here's the Fingertips mental health stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health And here's the Fingertips suicide stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro... Currently the ratio of deaths by suicide for men:women is something like 4:1 or 3:1, and we think that's because (as you've said) men tend to use more lethal methods. (Although we've seen a really worrying increase in lethality of method in women in the UK). Go careful when comparing the UK stats with the US. I think we count different things. For example: a death that would be counted as a suicide in someone over the age of 15 is not counted as a suicide in someone under the age of 15. I don't think the US does that.
VSerge 10y ago
It's always strange to see someone wondering whether skin pigmentation has something to do with something completely unrelated like mental health or suicide rate, when so many other factors with demonstrably more impact come into play (social, economic, etc).
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Yes it's not like skin pigmentation correlates with anything at all. The author is surely suggesting that skin color is the cause and that's just silly.
sebringj 10y ago
Evolution goes deeper than your rationalizations. Our brains descended from a long line of successful matings that obviously waited long enough to fuck before checking out. Possibly the fucking potential keeps us keepin' on in the lower level of our subconscious. It may also be hard wired preservation (the fear of pain), basic pleasure, caring of others, the illusion of god(s) or some imagined purpose of life, but I would guess mostly the fucking potential drives it all, at least for the younger. There's just a lot of good things to distract us from wanting death. But again, it goes deeper than our rationalizations so its going to be hard to say exactly without in depth scientific studies on the matter.
pasbesoin 10y ago
Altruism. You believe in the human race -- perhaps despite being majorly screwed by some individuals. You just no longer believe in yourself. I'm about there, myself. P.S. When I wrote this, I missed the "few" in the title.
ComodoHacker 10y ago
>Close to 100% of humans could suicide, and yet ‘only’ about 1.4% do Very bad and misleading wording. 1.4% here is of total number of deaths, not total number of people. Also, both numbers seem untrue. Wiki says[1] "approximately 0.5% to 1.4% of people die by suicide". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology
- jpttsn 10y ago
  What's the difference? Everyone dies, right?
- tezzer 10y ago
  As I mentioned elsewhere, this math is wrong. it's 10 to 44 people per 100,000, which is .01 to .04%, 2 orders of magnitude lower than 1%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
rdslw 10y ago
This question is much more interesting when you realize that modern neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free will in humans. What is a reason to live if they are not your decisions driving it? Skipping over all (judical etc) consequences, if this is true, then life has no sense and it's more/less ok to end it - what's funny, suicide would also not be your (as in free will) decision... Meaning this is a time bomb programmed into any thinking brain (and any AI as, what's double funny, this logic also applies to any AI). Dodge that homo sapiens :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405 https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > This question is much more interesting where you realize that modern neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free will in humans. Science inherently approaches the universe in a way which leaves no room for materially meaningful "free will"; only strict material determination and randomness.
  - idanoeman 10y ago
    I don't think the scientific method is inherently materialistic - it's just that our most validated theories about how the world work are materialist.
slantaclaus 10y ago
OK, now that I see the stat he's calling "low", 1.4%. I actually disagree. That's a pretty high number that we could probably get to go down further. Assuming that one person out of every graduating high school class is going to kill his/her-self would seem to me to be a fairly morbid assumption. But this appears to be the case. I think the responsibility for the weight (or perhaps, levity) of the philosophical observations made in this article fall back only on the writer himself, and his own attitude(s) towards suicide.
- ci5er 10y ago
  > That's a pretty high number that we could probably get to go down further Why? At what cost? For what benefit?
- tezzer 10y ago
  He did the math wrong. The source he links shows about 10 deaths per 100,000 which is .01%. He's high by 2 orders of magnitude. Edited to add: The highest by-country rate using the statistics he cites is Guyana at 44 per 100,000, which is .044%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
- exolymph 10y ago
  *she
adynatos 10y ago
this is overly simplistic. melancholic depression is roughly 3/4 of all cases, the rest is from bipolar disorder, which makes it more likely to for people to kill themselves. how does this theory explain postpartum depression in females?
andrewfromx 10y ago
i think the author misses the data point of actuall doing it, is not easy. He keeps repeating, everyone has the ability to kill themselves, but is this true? I think most people, even if pain is at 100% and desire to do it is at 100% the knife/gun/etc just won't go. So re-think the whole thing from the point that VERY FEW humans have the ability to do it.
leakybit 10y ago
pain, suffering, happiness, evil, good are all synthetic constructs developed by evolution that optimize the feedback loop in which a system of molecules is suck in.
cmurf 10y ago
How do other primates behave in this regard? I'd expect various coping mechanisms exist to reduce stress becoming so high that the individual contemplates suicide as a solution, i.e. I'd expect it to be more common the individual experiences cognitive dissonance, followed by denial, withdrawal, misdirection, etc. to avoid having to directly deal with the stress inducing information/situation. Suicide requires planning, so it's a very cognitive process, where many of our coping mechanisms are more automated (even if learned, typically that's at a very young age).
pducks32 10y ago
I love how far philosophy has come. This is very science based and yet my first reaction to the article's title was Cmd+F..."Camus". As Camus would say it seems obvious that we realize life is stupid and we should just kill ourselves but—something I didn't realize when I suffered with depression was—that when you realize everything is stupid and meaningless you find this deep appreciation or what I call "the game." You find a competition with "meaninglessness" and even suffering. And I love that game. I think people learn to love life; they find meaning in life and so they keep going.
shanacarp 10y ago
I find this a bit over the top/strange to contemplate Maybe because I have known people who successfully committed suicide - it turns out people who survive almost always are thankful/happy they did. In fact, it turns out if you interview people who jump from building and manage to survive, as they fall, they are thinking they wish they hadn't done that...

238 points by networked 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago

The relationship between depression and suicide with age is just correlation not causation, so it's silly to draw a line there and assume they are connected -- especially since we know depressed people have a higher suicide rate than people without depression. I think this post is an attempt to make an obvious question seem like it has deep or non-obvious answers; but in reality I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. It's that simple. It's like asking "Why don't more humans become ballet dancers?" Some try and fail but most just don't want to. If the question is really; why don't more people want to kill themselves, then the answer is going to vary person by person and be difficult if not impossible to answer globally. Bob might not have any thoughts of suicide at all but Alice might think about it but want to see her nephew grow up and not inflict that pain on her parents. Truly answering that question would involve a really comprehensive study of a lot of different groups to even attempt to answer it.

pritambaral 10y ago
The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. The paper asks a question, and the article tries to think along the lines of the question and asks some more. ---- > I think the answers are pretty obvious. Most people don't kill themselves because they don't want to. That is a simple conclusion, indeed; and it's not wrong either. The article tries to reason how that conclusion came to be. People who have had suicidal thoughts but didn't go through with it did ultimately not want to do it, but before that decision they did want to, by definition of 'suicidal people'. The article – inspired by the paper – opens with the premise that 'pain' and 'human cognition' alone should make a human want to 'give up' upon the slightest inconvenience, and then goes on to try and come up with other factors — like your Alice wanting to see her nephew grow up or not wanting to inflict pain on her parents — that prevent 'pain and brain' from having their way uncontested.
- Jedd 10y ago
  > The paper does not draw a causation, nor does the article. It does draw a conclusion: > Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk > of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, > especially young people. But the effect is tiny. > And some people do think antidepressants relieve > suffering. If depression caused suicide, treating > depression should reduce suicide rates, but of > course it hasn’t. This could be due to the > ineffectiveness of treatment, however. If depression caused suicide, treating depressing should reduce suicide rates ... BUT ... that assumes we identify and 'rectify' all depression, and that the only cause of suicide is depression, and that the only metric of success for treatment of depression is a reduction in suicide (across the board) ... and if you adopt those three positions then the numbers start to make sense. 'But of course' this isn't the whole story.
  - patall 10y ago
    Exactly. Treating the symptoms does not mean treating the cause and might even enhance it.
  - pritambaral 10y ago
    That is not causation, is it?
mabcat 10y ago
I think your comment has blurred some distinctions that the post takes care to pull apart. Every human inevitably suffers and has reason to commit suicide, so why don't they all want to? Many more people want to commit suicide than do commit suicide, so why is that? The reasons that you posited for Alice not killing herself were among many mentioned in the post.
bitshiffed 10y ago
I think the post is very interesting, and not completely obvious. It's not as much about people deciding whether or not to commit suicide; it is, that all of the benefits of intelligence also come with one potentially huge evolutionary problem, suicide. Given that any natural variance in likelihood to commit suicide should be very heavily selected for or against, what adaptations might we have that were picked up to decrease it's likelihood? The idea in the post is that some mental illnesses may be connected to these adaptations.

scardine 10y ago

The relevant question is "Why so many humans kill themselves?". Because asking the other way around implies suicide is natural, which is a ratter extraordinary claim.

jelly 10y ago
The article approaches it from the perspective of "what preventative measures does the human body and mind use against suicide." In this context "so few" is probably the right wording, given a 98.6% reduction compared to no prevention (according to the numbers from the article).
eximius 10y ago
Perhaps. But it is also pedagogically valuable to ask "Why don't more people commit suicide?" We might learn something about the mental defence mechanism the brain employs.
- uuiiyyokthis 10y ago
  Pedagogy /can/ go off the rails if it places other goals above the elimination of human killing. I know this is self-evident, however there are many hidden killers out there so consider this a billboard.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    There's no ethical reason to oppose suicide, in general. Many cultures valorized it in certain situations.
Spooky23 10y ago
The question as posed is an interesting one, as it sits on the boundary of where the "lizard brain" and executive thought process meet. The instinct to survive is very strong, even when the rational brain thinks (rightly or wrongly) that it's a hopeless situation. Understanding how and why people cross that line may be a way to identify people at risk and intervene.
deleted 10y ago

wahsd 10y ago

How is this such a difficult question. Suicide is an inherently evolutionary bad idea and is eliminated from the gene pool by obvious means. Are there even any documented incidents of aberrational suicide in any other species?

antiquark 10y ago

Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.

jokoon 10y ago
Well in society artificial selection seems to have much more influence on us.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Society is natural.
  - jokoon 10y ago
    Government, laws, science, technology, management? Do all those things appear in nature without our initiative? They seem to be made by humans. I don't really know. Ultimately you can argue that everything happening in the universe is natural, but I would make a difference between things created by intelligent creatures and the things that appears with natural selection. That doesn't involve intelligent design.
    - allendoerfer 10y ago
      Many other species have different forms of complex societies.

libeclipse 10y ago

According to the link, around 1 in 100 people commit suicide. It could be argued that this is a rather high number. Certainly any other diseases that achieved this would receive significant attention. What is interesting however, is how suicide rates haven't changed with other things like medical improvements and improvements to quality of life.

paulcole 10y ago
I think you're vastly overestimating how much people care. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Check out, Chronic lower respiratory diseases at nearly 4x suicide. Can't remember hearing a thing about that in the news.
- 2607_hn 10y ago
  You probably have heard of campaigns to reduce smoking. These diseases (e.g., COPD and the related emphysema/chronic bronchitis) are strongly linked to smoking. In the mid 90s, I remember seeing some anti-smoking campaigns that used people with tracheotomies (see ref 1); these folks almost definitely had lower respiratory disease. Your point is well-taken - we hardly spoke about addiction as a medical health problem until recently. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7bHdo2DJHY - this is only part of one of the ads I recall
- sevenless 10y ago
  It's also a killer of younger people. I'd bet suicide accounts for more life-years lost.
tim333 10y ago
>significant attention I think people are aware of it but it's a bit depressing to talk about given that solutions aren't easy. I can see it getting more coverage as other causes become less common in young people. It's the #1 cause for ages 15-45 in Australia for example (that's just the country that came up on random googling) http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/ http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/ I think it's more cheerful to give attention to making society happier and healthier which should have a knock on effect on the suicide rate.

benten10 10y ago

There's this AMAZING scifi story, which I read in 'Writers of The Future' (great series, named after the eminent L Ron. H.). It imagines a future where after a certain age, everyone has a chip planted in them, which makes it possible to kill oneself 'on demand', painlessly, so to speak. It 'naturally selects' away all those who are uhh, more instably minded, and selects for the very very 'stable' minded. I believe the story was about how boring, unimaginative the society had gotten because natural selection had optimized for stability. Great read! You should read it if you haven't. The writer's of the future series is a collection of amazing stories also, and what finally tipped me into the Sciences, despite the somewhat uhh interesting Scientology connection. Anyone remember the name of the story? This was inspired by @antiquark's comment: >>Probably has something to do with the theory of natural selection.

tribune 10y ago

Remember that it's technically a valid evolutionary strategy to live to, say, 25, have a few kids, then off yourself. Suicide before reproduction is all that would be selected against.

hasenj 10y ago
Depends on how much your children need you actually. I've read somewhere that part of the reason women lose ability to bear children past around 40 is so they can take care of their grand children because that is usually more important at that point from an evolutionary point of view. It might have been a mere speculation but it kind of makes sense. Rather than take the time to bare and raise one child, that time is better spent taking care of your 6 grand children.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  I dislike these kinds of explanations because they seem like ex post facto rationalizations. An explanation that could have gone both ways explains nothing: * Women stop having children after 40 because it's more important to raise the children you already have. * Women don't stop having children after 40 because bearing more offspring increases your chances of survival. Your explanation barely makes sense even on its own merits. Surely, if nature wanted us to have N children and then take care of them, it would have set a cutoff on N, rather than on the time. What if someone has no children before 40? Is it to their evolutionary advantage to care for the children they didn't have? Or, if your explanation were true, why would women not spend ten years gestating and given birth to a healthy 10-year old? It's illogical to design a system that can pop out one baby every nine months and then say "okay now that you've had anywhere from zero to thirty children, it would be best if you stopped and took care of them.
  - pizza 10y ago
    We should design an ultralongitudinal study where we select for child-rearing volume and see what result we get /s
  - sinxoveretothex 10y ago

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>The fact that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in medical technology and other ways of life is astounding. Because depression is a disease, its not just feeling blue because something happened to you and as such it probably has has the same distribution since the early days of humanity. Its a disease with no good treatments so we can expect the same mortality rate. I think handwringing over people having easier lives but still killing themselves is fairly meaningless, and frankly, more than a little shaming. Depression affects people almost randomly. Wealthy people with easy lives kill themselves just as readily as poor people with harder lives. You can't will yourself out of depression because things are easy for you. The disease, unfortunately, doesn't work that way. I have major depression. Its not caused by some negative life events or my parents not loving me or anything like that. Its clearly something I was born with or rapidly developed when I was just a child. I think its dangerous to talk about depression as not being a disease of the brain and as something that emerges from negative life events. Those things can certainly make it worse, but depression is a disease like any other, not a mood.

mikeash 10y ago

While interesting, this article seems to ignore the possibility that most people simply have a very strong desire to live. It assumes that if someone is suffering, and death would end that suffering, then suicide makes sense, and something weird must be going on to make people keep going. But this really doesn't make sense. The entire concept of suffering exists merely to keep us alive. We experience pain and despair and sadness not because it's some inherent part of being conscious, but because those sensations help us to avoid things which are detrimental to survival. When push comes to shove, the drive to survive is what's fundamental, and that will (usually) override the desire to avoid suffering. As intelligent, conscious beings, we have the capability to understand when survival is no longer possible, making suffering a waste. Thus we can, sometimes, override our desire to live in the face of terminal illness. But what's weird is not the fact that we don't constantly kill ourselves at the first sign of trouble, what's weird is the fact that we do sometimes kill ourselves when things look completely hopeless. You might as well try to stay alive, after all.

55555 10y ago
> But what's weird is not the fact that we don't constantly kill ourselves at the first sign of trouble, what's weird is the fact that we do sometimes kill ourselves when things look completely hopeless. I think hope plays a big part. We don't kill ourselves because we have hope. If we are suffering and have no hope, that's a recipe for suicide.
- Retric 10y ago
  Being extremely depressed actually reduces short term risks of suicide because planning shuts down. It's the middle ground where things are bad, but people can still think that has the highest risks.* *Excluding hospital assisted suicide where someone OD's on pain medication under end of life pain.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    But "no hope" is not equivalent to "extremely depressed". Think of people who commit suicide over inescapable scandals, chronic pain, or terminal illness. Extremely depressed comes with 'no hope', but that's cancelled out by 'decreased agency' (which is one theory for why antidepressants carry suicide risk). Not every form of hopelessness shares that loss of agency.

jokoon 10y ago

Easy answer: because we want to believe life is precious and that you only live once. Mental health is taboo. I'm not trying to say that we should let people die, but the living standard has really skyrocketed, meanwhile we still have behaviors and systems that do damage to mental health, and we still disregard those problems.

hasenj 10y ago
I think actually it's because we fear death. Even if you're an atheist and know that when you die nothing will happen besides you disappearing, you still don't want to do it. Even people who commit suicide often would rather if they didn't have to use that option. The worst thing about war in my opinion is not just that people die, but that people live in constant fear of death.
- pluma 10y ago
  > Even if you're an atheist I really don't understand this sentiment. Surely belief in an afterlife is a far greater motivator to off yourself than not? It's only religions that threaten you with eternal suffering if you do that would act as a special deterrent (easily eliminating all religions that don't have a concept of hell). Especially if you consider that some of those even go out of their way to make exceptions for certain forms of murder-suicide ("suicide attacks").
- ionised 10y ago
  You're presuming to speak for others. I don't fear death at all. I fear dying slowly and in pain.

_jgvg 10y ago

Maybe we should just add lithium to the water supply, although that would drive conspiracy theorists crazy! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579 "Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L; the differences remain statistically significant (p less than 0.01) after corrections for population density." Edit: on a second thought, it wouldn't drive them crazy, it would literally calm them! Edit 2: I'm not proposing adding therapy-level doses of lithium to the water, just equalizing it to the water in other regions.

nibs 10y ago
I made that argument in a prior thread and people were really, really against it. Despite the abundance of evidence, from that study and the Japanese one [1]. I think Zinc would make a good addition too re: suicide [2]. There are two other large scale studies like this for lithium, both confirming the findings. One from Greece [3] and one from Argentina (can't find it...) [1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280 [2]: http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00626-5/abstract?cc=y= http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00626-5/abs... [3]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24072668
- iaskwhy 10y ago
  Are these available as supplements and, if so, is it safe to take them?
  - johnward 10y ago
    It's available as a prescription in the US. A psychiatrist can prescribe it. There are other drugs that have less side effects that can be tried first though. I wouldn't take it without doctor supervision as it's very easy to reach toxic levels in your blood. Even while on it with a doctor you need blood work regularly. It is one thing that did finally start to help me after about 10 years of dealing with bipolar 2 (which included symptoms of not wanting to live). https://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Meds/Lithium https://www.crazymeds.us/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Meds/Lithium

tmcpro 10y ago

the highest suicide rate is among people 85 years or older. With the advancement of healthcare people are living longer. So the rate of suicide amongst younger demographics most likely has declined slightly

hasenj 10y ago
Interesting. I've often contemplated about it. I don't think I want to live past 80. I mean unless there would be a medical revolution where you can retain youth or slow down aging significantly.
- a3n 10y ago
  Get back to us when you turn 80. :) People's experience change their perspective. What's important to you now will change. What you're able to appreciate changes.
  - hasenj 10y ago
    I actually used to have that limit set to 60, but then when I thought about it, I probably would still have some physical strength at 60 and still wouldn't want to die. But at 80 I can't imagine myself being other than a total wreck.
    - pshc 10y ago
      60 is the new 40 :)
    - vkou 10y ago
      My grandfather is 89. He can't walk very far, he gets tired very easily, and he has arrhythmia - yet he is still very strong, and very active. Most days, he gets up at 5, works in the garden, or the woodworking shop, or on property maintenance, finishes up by noon, and watches television until evening. This has been more or less his routine for the past 13 years. If you remain active through your life, I think you're much more likely to stay active as you're older. I intend to retire by 40, but I don't intend to be idle.

return0 10y ago

> virtually all adults have the intellectual wherewithal to take their own lives Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead", and another to actually go through the processes to do that. Suicide killers for example, need a strong metaphysical motive and promise of reward to do that. I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal pressures would ever consider suicide.

anexprogrammer 10y ago
> Do they? It's one thing to say 'i dont want to live' or "i wish i was dead", and another to actually go through the processes to do that I think everyone has the capability, just as they have to murder. That they have not found circumstance such that they can conceive of it taking place doesn't mean they can't. People discover surprising (for good and ill) things about themselves when pushed to their limits and beyond. > I often wonder if a man stranded alone in an island , without any societal pressures would ever consider suicide. Whilst they'd be free of debt collectors, divorce, job loss, shame and the various other factors that may increase suicide, they'd also have new factors. For instance perhaps the island has no, or inadequate food and water. If you had a revolver and the prospect of starving to death considering surely suicide may be considered? What of disease or serious injury?
hansjorg 10y ago
> Suicide killers for example, need a strong metaphysical motive and promise of reward to do that. There are many examples of suicide bombings without religious motivation and with non-religious perpetrators.

Locke 10y ago

> One of the most amazing things about suicide is that over the past 80 years or so in the United States, suicide rates have been extremely flat. The fact that suicide rates have not changed in response to changes in medical technology and other ways of life is astounding. This may be true in the US, but in Greenland it seems like suicide rates have changed in response to changing ways of life: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/474847921/the-arctic-suicides-its-not-the-dark-that-kills-you http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/21/47484792...

Bartweiss 10y ago
An obvious question is whether suicide rates are unchanged, or simply flat because we have opposed changes obscuring the data. There's a bit of variance in the US numbers, and I wonder how means reduction, a decline in chronic pain/terminal illness, and various way of life changes compare. I'd be surprised if none of those things were relevant, but less surprised if they didn't add up to a clear trend.

tim333 10y ago

tl;dr, the article mostly discusses Soper’s hypothesis that "mental illnesses" such as depression evolved as defences against suicide rather than being the cause. So I guess rather than thinking the job's crap, I'll just have a jolly skydiving trip with no chute you get depressed instead. There might be something there - I've always been a bit puzzled by the evolutionary function of depression.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I'm not sure there needs to be an evolutionary function for everything. Some things are just "dewclaws".

rrod 10y ago

I had a strange mental illness period a few years ago. In my opinion, Dr Peter Breggin and others with similar believes are right. To some people, like slow metabolizers, these psychiatric drugs, are the cause of suicide and other irrational behavior. The author says "Indeed, there appears to be a slight elevated risk of suicide in people taking some antidepressants, especially young people. But the effect is tiny". I think the word "tiny" is the problem here. The effect is not "tiny". It is simply misunderstood or ignored.

sixhobbits 10y ago

Martin Hart: So... what's the point of getting' outta bed in the morning? Rustin Cohle: I tell myself I bear witness. But the real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide. --True Detective

Shengbo 10y ago
Time is a flat circle. rolls up a booger between his thumb and index finger

Joof 10y ago

I got really scared for a while because I was both suicidal (the idea itself gave me an endorphin rush to think about) and my energy levels were fairly normal / I wasn't showing other symptoms of being depressed. Depression as a mechanism for preventing suicide sounds plausible.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jdimov9 10y ago

You don't seem to understand much about evolution, or life. Claiming that evolution is a random, unguided "whatever works" process is mere ignorance. To everyone who has ever looked around (or listened around, or sensed around) even for one moment, it is beyond obvious that not only evolution works "by design", but that this design is supremely personal and the ultimate in creativity. So the implied negative connotations in your "creationist" label are misplaced.

sinxoveretothex 10y ago
Ok, so there's a "designer" out there engineering rapists, murderers, limbless people, mentally handicapped people? Why the hell did the designer create maggots that feed on people's nose tissues[1]? More to the point: what's the design goal? To quote EY [2]: > But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don't fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind? > When I design a toaster oven, I don't design one part that tries to get electricity to the coils and a second part that tries to prevent electricity from getting to the coils. It would be a waste of effort. Who designed the ecosystem, with its predators and prey, viruses and bacteria? Even the cactus plant, which you might think well-designed to provide water fruit to desert animals, is covered with inconvenient spines. I don't deny that if there is a "designer", then he gets a lot of points for creativity. I mean, it takes a lot of "creativity" to design an 8 limbed baby [3], twins sharing the same body [4] or a child with a skull that won't stop growing [5]. Sure, it's very "creative" and even personal I guess (I mean, when you get ostracized for having an "elephant face" it sure appears to be very meant and taken very personally). So I guess you're right in at least one metaphorical sense. [1] http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1249503802 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2c8_1249503802 [2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kr/an_alien_god/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM82Hs0LEpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM82Hs0LEpc [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K57IcN9DWXo [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2SWfoPD5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2SWfoPD5c
enraged_camel 10y ago

amelius 10y ago

Reminds me of this quote: > If there wasn't the possibility of killing myself, I would have killed myself!

kingkawn 10y ago

When its over its over forever. No point rushing.

razorunreal 10y ago

What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world and their place in it. When someone's expectations do not match reality it's not normally considered intelligent, but positivity seems unrealistic, common and beneficial to survival.

justratsinacoat 10y ago
>What if not being depressed is the beneficial adaptation? It would not surprise me if many depressed people have a more accurate view of the world and their place in it It's funny that you should mention that... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

11thEarlOfMar 10y ago

DNA is a self-optimizing program for its own survival. After millions of years of optimization, ones will to live is quite powerful. The twist is that the optimization mechanism relies on mistakes in copying itself. One outcome of a copy mistake could be a weakened will to live in certain negative life circumstances.

cwmma 10y ago

I guess it might make sense to compare to suicide rates in non-human animals (e.g. dolphins which can just stop breathing to kill themselves)

onetwotree 10y ago

A mistake and an insight. The idea that white men have the highest suicide rate is misleading - they have the highest rate of success, which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns, which are far and away the most effective and effortless way to commit suicide. Effortlessness is important, because depression makes planning so difficult. FWIW I'd really appreciate it if we could not turn this into a debate about gun control. The insight, of course, is that Elliot Smith didn't have a drug problem, he was looking for a drug solution. This is an incredibly accurate description of addiction. The saying in AA is "If alcohol didn't do anything for me, I'd never have let it do anything to me". Drugs and alcohol are a solution to the underlying problem, one in which we simply can't feel ok the way others can. Of course, they are a solution with horrible side effects, and one that eventually stops working. Many members of AA describe getting sober because the drugs and alcohol weren't working anymore, only to become suicidal and realize that the drugs and alcohol were only symptoms of a much deeper problem.

intoverflow2 10y ago
> which is very likely because they are the most likely to own guns America is not the world
- onetwotree 10y ago
  I think the data were taken among Americans (they included Native Americans). You're right though, and looking at data from other countries with stronger gun restrictions would be an interesting way to check this hypothesis.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    In England you can use the Office for National Statistics data sets. These are good quality, and they're very clear about what is or isn't counted as a death by suicide. http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2014registrations http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea... You can also use the Public Health England "Fingertips" datasets which breaksdown the data a bit more. Here's the main Fingertips site: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/ And here's the Fingertips mental health stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health And here's the Fingertips suicide stuff: http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro... Currently the ratio of deaths by suicide for men:women is something like 4:1 or 3:1, and we think that's because (as you've said) men tend to use more lethal methods. (Although we've seen a really worrying increase in lethality of method in women in the UK). Go careful when comparing the UK stats with the US. I think we count different things. For example: a death that would be counted as a suicide in someone over the age of 15 is not counted as a suicide in someone under the age of 15. I don't think the US does that.

VSerge 10y ago

It's always strange to see someone wondering whether skin pigmentation has something to do with something completely unrelated like mental health or suicide rate, when so many other factors with demonstrably more impact come into play (social, economic, etc).

Houshalter 10y ago
Yes it's not like skin pigmentation correlates with anything at all. The author is surely suggesting that skin color is the cause and that's just silly.

sebringj 10y ago

Evolution goes deeper than your rationalizations. Our brains descended from a long line of successful matings that obviously waited long enough to fuck before checking out. Possibly the fucking potential keeps us keepin' on in the lower level of our subconscious. It may also be hard wired preservation (the fear of pain), basic pleasure, caring of others, the illusion of god(s) or some imagined purpose of life, but I would guess mostly the fucking potential drives it all, at least for the younger. There's just a lot of good things to distract us from wanting death. But again, it goes deeper than our rationalizations so its going to be hard to say exactly without in depth scientific studies on the matter.

pasbesoin 10y ago

Altruism. You believe in the human race -- perhaps despite being majorly screwed by some individuals. You just no longer believe in yourself. I'm about there, myself. P.S. When I wrote this, I missed the "few" in the title.

ComodoHacker 10y ago

>Close to 100% of humans could suicide, and yet ‘only’ about 1.4% do Very bad and misleading wording. 1.4% here is of total number of deaths, not total number of people. Also, both numbers seem untrue. Wiki says[1] "approximately 0.5% to 1.4% of people die by suicide". 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide#Epidemiology

jpttsn 10y ago
What's the difference? Everyone dies, right?
tezzer 10y ago
As I mentioned elsewhere, this math is wrong. it's 10 to 44 people per 100,000, which is .01 to .04%, 2 orders of magnitude lower than 1%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

rdslw 10y ago

This question is much more interesting when you realize that modern neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free will in humans. What is a reason to live if they are not your decisions driving it? Skipping over all (judical etc) consequences, if this is true, then life has no sense and it's more/less ok to end it - what's funny, suicide would also not be your (as in free will) decision... Meaning this is a time bomb programmed into any thinking brain (and any AI as, what's double funny, this logic also applies to any AI). Dodge that homo sapiens :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405 https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405

dragonwriter 10y ago
> This question is much more interesting where you realize that modern neuroscience is (slowly) going more and more into area that there is no free will in humans. Science inherently approaches the universe in a way which leaves no room for materially meaningful "free will"; only strict material determination and randomness.
- idanoeman 10y ago
  I don't think the scientific method is inherently materialistic - it's just that our most validated theories about how the world work are materialist.

slantaclaus 10y ago

OK, now that I see the stat he's calling "low", 1.4%. I actually disagree. That's a pretty high number that we could probably get to go down further. Assuming that one person out of every graduating high school class is going to kill his/her-self would seem to me to be a fairly morbid assumption. But this appears to be the case. I think the responsibility for the weight (or perhaps, levity) of the philosophical observations made in this article fall back only on the writer himself, and his own attitude(s) towards suicide.

ci5er 10y ago
> That's a pretty high number that we could probably get to go down further Why? At what cost? For what benefit?
tezzer 10y ago
He did the math wrong. The source he links shows about 10 deaths per 100,000 which is .01%. He's high by 2 orders of magnitude. Edited to add: The highest by-country rate using the statistics he cites is Guyana at 44 per 100,000, which is .044%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
exolymph 10y ago
*she

adynatos 10y ago

this is overly simplistic. melancholic depression is roughly 3/4 of all cases, the rest is from bipolar disorder, which makes it more likely to for people to kill themselves. how does this theory explain postpartum depression in females?

andrewfromx 10y ago

i think the author misses the data point of actuall doing it, is not easy. He keeps repeating, everyone has the ability to kill themselves, but is this true? I think most people, even if pain is at 100% and desire to do it is at 100% the knife/gun/etc just won't go. So re-think the whole thing from the point that VERY FEW humans have the ability to do it.

leakybit 10y ago

pain, suffering, happiness, evil, good are all synthetic constructs developed by evolution that optimize the feedback loop in which a system of molecules is suck in.

cmurf 10y ago

How do other primates behave in this regard? I'd expect various coping mechanisms exist to reduce stress becoming so high that the individual contemplates suicide as a solution, i.e. I'd expect it to be more common the individual experiences cognitive dissonance, followed by denial, withdrawal, misdirection, etc. to avoid having to directly deal with the stress inducing information/situation. Suicide requires planning, so it's a very cognitive process, where many of our coping mechanisms are more automated (even if learned, typically that's at a very young age).

pducks32 10y ago

I love how far philosophy has come. This is very science based and yet my first reaction to the article's title was Cmd+F..."Camus". As Camus would say it seems obvious that we realize life is stupid and we should just kill ourselves but—something I didn't realize when I suffered with depression was—that when you realize everything is stupid and meaningless you find this deep appreciation or what I call "the game." You find a competition with "meaninglessness" and even suffering. And I love that game. I think people learn to love life; they find meaning in life and so they keep going.

shanacarp 10y ago

I find this a bit over the top/strange to contemplate Maybe because I have known people who successfully committed suicide - it turns out people who survive almost always are thankful/happy they did. In fact, it turns out if you interview people who jump from building and manage to survive, as they fall, they are thinking they wish they hadn't done that...